


Portraiture

by thatnerdtori



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Ficlet, Friendship, Gen, Prompt Fic, Steve Feels, Steve draws
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-02
Updated: 2013-01-02
Packaged: 2017-11-23 08:38:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/620178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatnerdtori/pseuds/thatnerdtori
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for a prompt in a Tumblr RP: "Paint Me -  I’ll write a drabble about my character drawing a picture of yours."</p><p>Steve likes to draw and Clint Barton makes him think.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Portraiture

**Author's Note:**

> It's been way too long since I've actually written any fic that I really felt was finished enough to post. This one came about totally unexpectedly. There was a list of drabble prompts going around the Tumblr RP blogs (in which I play Steve) and my Clint sent me this one. It's a little bit longer than a drabble, and I like it. Basically, Steve and Clint are bros, Clint is a really awesome guy, Steve is impressed, and he draws in his spare time, because, yes, he went to art school. 
> 
> Thanks to Sarah for giving me the prompt!

Most of the world tended to forget that Captain America had gone to art school. Somehow, even in these progressive, modern times, the idea of a guy with a sketchpad didn’t seem to coexist well with the image of the guy who punched Hitler in the face. But, the fact remained, he had attended art school, for a couple of years at least, and often he preferred to spend his time drawing instead of destroying Stark’s punching bags.  
  
He chose his subjects fairly arbitrarily. Sometimes it was doodles and cartoons of his own invention, a way of mulling ideas or releasing frustrations. Shortly after waking up, he’d spent a lot of time sketching the various new additions to the New York City skyline in an attempt to re-familiarize himself with his hometown. Occasionally, he drew people.  
  
He had a sketchbook on his shelf entirely full of portraits drawn, from memory, of people he’d known during the war. They’d been done about a month after he woke from the ice, just a few weeks after the “Battle of New York”, and before they’d all moved into Tony’s ridiculous skyscraper. He’d woken up in the middle of the night, terrified. He was anything but a stranger to nightmares, but in this dream his super-human memory had been failing him and once-familiar faces were being erased like they were made of chalk. He’d started drawing then and there and filled the book in less than a week, forcing himself to remember minute details of their faces; Peggy, Howard, Dugan, Jacques, Bucky, everyone.  
  
Some of his sketchbooks contained pictures of strangers, people he saw on the streets or in restaurants and who struck him. A kid with green spiked hair, a group of actors leaving a theater, an older lady walking four dogs. He found that it was becoming more and more difficult to spend very long in public though, with the notoriety their “response team” was gaining, so these sketches were becoming scarcer.  
  
To put it simply, he didn’t make much of a habit of sketching his teammates.  
  
Steve tended to draw things that stuck out in his head and made him think. If something was floating around in his head, forming it into a picture on a page just seemed satisfying, grounding somehow. Capturing the angles and perspectives of things that stood out to him seemed to help him arrange his thoughts.  
  
He saw his fellow Avengers so often that, even though they included a demigod and green monster, they were consistent and well-established ideas in his head. Besides which, they were all so busy that for one of them to remain in remotely the same position for more than a couple of minutes was unheard of.  
  
Now and then, however, he sees something new in one of them that makes him think…and maybe he’s a little bored…and happens to have a sketchbook with him…  
  
Well, that’s the least-awkward way to explain why he’s been sketching a sleeping Clint Barton for the better part of an hour.  
  
He likes Clint. He’s a good guy, smart, skillful, and able to keep an incredibly cool head in mind-boggling situations. He has a rambunctious streak, causes trouble and pulls pranks from time to time, but overall he’s easy to get along with and Steve is happy to count him among his friends as well as allies.  
  
But what strikes Steve about the archer, on this lazy post-battle afternoon while the other man is asleep in a tshirt and pajama pants on one of the couches in the rec room with some kind of cartoon marathon playing on the television, is how incredibly normal he actually is. Putting aside the years of SHIELD training, the childhood spent in a circus, the loss of his family, the overall emotional trauma of the work he’s done, and the people he lives with…Clint is really pretty ordinary.  
  
The muscles in his arms (which are wedged under his head) aren’t augmented by any kind of one-in-a-million serum, he maintains them himself. The lines on his face (which are proving damn difficult to capture in graphite) are hard-earned and not smoothed out by any slowed aging-process. His eyes (which are closed, contrary to popular belief the Hawk does not sleep with his eyes open) aren’t as sharp as they are because of a science experiment, but because of training and natural talent. His head (which is covered in absurdly mussed hair) isn’t full of genius-level thought processes, but the honed determination of someone who has learned to excel in what they need to to survive.  
  
Everyone on his team is amazing. They wouldn’t be here if they weren’t. But, in a lot of ways, Steve finds Clint to be the most impressive of them all.


End file.
